The present invention relates generally to information and more particularly to information across all media types.
On the forefront in the advances of the home entertainment industry is the emergence of multimedia sources available to a new generation of home entertainment systems, namely, convergence systems. PCs, TVs, DVDs, CD players, EPGs, etc., are being converged into one system providing users a broad spectrum of potential home entertainment. What is lacking, however, is the capability to view the voluminous information associated with all of the media sources in one coherent user interface.
In merging components into one system (i.e., PCs, TVs, DVDs, EPGs, etc.), convergence systems contain several different media source types. For example, PCs store information in several different file formats, requiring users to search for the desired information, electronic program guides, or EPGs, contain information for current and future television programming, and the Internet contains a plethora of information on virtually any subject. As more components are added to convergence systems, new media source types are generated, forcing the user to utilize a plurality of user interfaces to cull through large quantities of information until the desired information is obtained.
For example, when a user wants to locate a file on a personal computer, the user must open a local search tool that will search for files and list the found files by name, date, extension, etc. Advanced searches for content contained within files may be performed, but depending on the efficiency of the system and the types of files searched, the user may be left with lengthy wait times for a search that may produce useless information.
In another example of searching across more than one media source type, suppose a user wanted to locate what TV channel a sporting event is airing and further wanted to listen to a radio or Internet broadcast of the sporting event in lieu of listening to the TV announcers. This would prompt the user to open an EPG, locate the event, and further open a web browser and/or search engine of some sort to locate an Internet address or radio broadcast station covering the sporting event, requiring the user to switch between applications to access the desired information.
A further shortcoming of present systems is the inability to provide data that is representative across all media source types. For example, suppose a user used a web browser and search engine to locate information about a movie and further wanted to find the movie""s soundtrack, a home page for the movie, or a pay-per-view cable channel airing the movie. The user would have to make a separate inquiry to find the desired media information. Current databases fail to merge all types of media information (PC, EPG, DVD, etc.) to provide a complete and comprehensive resource of multimedia information.
By convergence systems not providing a user with data across all media types and sources, they fall short of total convergence of available information. Therefore, what is needed is a system, interface, software, method, and signal to provide a user with information across all media source types.
Accordingly, the present invention provides a method comprising the steps of maintaining content information from a plurality of content sources of one or more types and maintaining a database of like associations to the content information wherein the associations correspond to at least one content source type.
The present invention also provides a system comprising at least one processor, memory operably coupled to the processor, a plurality of content sources of one or more types for providing content information, and a database of like associations to the content information wherein the associations correspond to at least one content source type.
The present invention also provides a computer readable medium tangibly embodying a program of instructions, the program of instructions implementing the method of maintaining content information from a plurality of content sources of one or more types and maintaining a database of like associations to the content information wherein the associations correspond to at least one content source type.
The present invention also provides a graphical user interface (GUI) comprising means for maintaining content information from a plurality of content sources of one or more types and means for maintaining a database of like associations to the content information wherein the associations correspond to at least one content source type.
The present invention also provides a signal embodied in a propagation medium comprising at least one instruction configured to provide content information from a plurality of content sources of one or more types and at least one instruction configured to create a database of like associations to the content information wherein the associations correspond to at least one content source type.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a database containing links of like items of the same media type.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a database containing links of like items of all media types.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a multimedia database with pre-processed links of like information.
One advantage of the present invention is its ability to provide a user searchable information for one media type.
Another advantage of the present invention is its ability to provide a user searchable information for all media types.
A further advantage of the present invention is its ability to provide pre-processed multimedia information links.